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Fabrication of tissue engineered tympanic membrane patches
The goal of this project is to utilize computer-aided design and injection molding technologies to tissue engineer precisely-shaped cartilage in the shape of butterfly tympanic membrane patches out of chondrocyte-seeded calcium alginate gels. Molds will be designed with the aid of computer programs and built using synthetic materials utilizing fused deposition modeling. Tympanic membrane patches will be fabricated using bovine articular chondrocytes seeded at high density in calcium alginate gels. Molded patches will be cultured in vitro for up to ten weeks, then assessed biochemically, morphologically, and histologically. We will fabricate cartilage-seeded tympanic membrane patches using cell culture techniques. The patches will then be placed into chinchilla tympanic membrane perforations, and the membranes will be examined histologically after harvesting. The work will be sponsored by Gyrus Corporation. Cliff Megerian, MD in collaboration with
L. Bonassar, PhD, Cornell University
Tissue Engineered Auricular Cartilage For Laryngotracheal Reconstruction  Allogeneic cartilage grafts for laryngotracheal reconstruction have been used successfully in animal models previously. Devitalized and organ-cultured allogenic cartilage have been compared in repair of laryngeal cartilage defects. It was found that devitalized tissue produced a significant inflammatory response, while the transplanted vital cartilage was well-accepted and showed no evidence of immune cell infiltration (Bujia 1995). There is always a risk of transmission of infectious disease with the use of fresh tissue allografts, however, and today cartilage allografts are not in use for human laryngotracheal reconstruction. The field of tissue engineering has demonstrated that chondrocytes can be isolated from harvested cartilage, expanded in tissue culture, and loaded onto a delivery vehicle to form cartilage (Rodriguez, Honda, Schreiber, Fragonas, Peretti, Brun, Wakitani, Stanton). We hypothesize that we can harvest a small piece of auricular cartilage from a rabbit, expand the chondrocytes in culture, and form a cartilage construct which can be used as an allograft in a laryngotracheal reconstruction in a rabbit.
James Dennis, PhD – Primary Appointment in the Department of Orthopedics
Secondary Appointment in the Department of Otolaryngology-HNS
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